Oh boy, was it hard to pick a photo for today!
Well...today was quite a day! Full of surprises...Calum, by chance, managed to book himself on to a helicopter (or heileacoptair if you fancy the Gaelic) ride up to a glacier, despite hearing they had all been booked up. It was something he really wanted to do, so we were chuffed he'd found out there was a space available.
He headed off at 10am and returned 2 hours later, in time to have lunch and head out with Maggie, Matthew and myself on the 'City Tour' of Skagway (just as exhilarating as a helicopter ride!), and he was absolutely buzzing! Saying we should all do it, we wouldn't get another chance like this again and he'd taken a business card so he could book us on directly, without going through the ship excursions, to the 3:35pm flight as they had spaces(!)...Maggie said no straight away, Matthew was majorly hesitant, and I was super keen. So, once Matthew manned up, Calum phoned to book us on...Aaagh!!
But before the excitement of the helicopter, we had our tour of Skagway to go on! Skagway has a grand total of 300 people, who only work 5 months of the year, when the cruise ships come in to dock (there were 3 in at the same time as us, but they have made enough dock space for 6 at once), and the other 7 months they wrap up warm and have parties at each other's houses, or go to the community centre for various activities. Don't let me forget to mention the horrible detail that they only get 20 minutes of sunshine at the end of December...unless our guide was messing with us...according to Google they get around 6 hours of DAYLIGHT, but it's in a Valley between big mountains, so perhaps it does only get 6 minutes of direct sunlight. Bleugh.
Moving on from that, a looooong time ago there was a glacier in the valley that Skagway sits in now, which compressed the land and pushed it down quite a bit, so now that the glacier's gone the ground is slowly rising again #weird. On the tour they told us about a man called 'Soapy Smith' who won the trust of the whole town and they put him in charge, when actually he was a total scam artist, stealing their money. So eventually people realised that he needed to be stopped, which led to a gun fight and Soapy Smith being shot in the heart, dying instantly. This took place on a dock, over the water...today there is a plaque marking the spot of the incident, but it is now 4 or 5 blocks away from the shoreline, because the ground is rising #superweird. We also found out that to drive to the nearest village, 16 miles away, you have to travel over 300 miles. Roughly 100 miles north, 100 miles west, and then 100 miles south...mental! So instead people take the ferry. Did I mention that you can't drive to Juneau? You have to arrive by either plane or boat...and that's their Capital City! Incredible. They have roads, but they only go so far.
So, anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed our tour of the 'city' of Skagway in our funky old bus from the 1920's, with our dressed up tour guide lady, while the sun was shining! And the weather being so good made me even more excited for our helicopter ride, so let's talk about that, shall we?
We all headed along to the flight centre, at the harbour, and Matthew and I had our safety briefing, got kitted out in life vests and overshoes (very attractive things), and when our helicopter arrived Matthew and I got put in the front seats!! Woohoo! The flight up to the glacier took about 20 minutes, and because the weather had cleared up a bit more since Calum's trip we were able to go a different route from his group, which took us over some beautiful wee lakes, and a couple smaller glaciers. I love helicopter flights!!
Once we landed on Meade Glacier a guide walked us around to see a few cool things. He informed us that we were standing above 800ft of ice, and that the glacier is currently 15 miles long, but it's receding all the time. You can see on the hills on either side where it used to be a few hundred years ago; a couple hundred feet higher. It recedes an incredible amount each week! There are boulders of various sizes, some tiny, some ginormous, just chillin' on the river of ice, because they were knocked off the sides of the mountains as the glacier pushed past it. Crazy. And there are a few massive holes or cracks which go down very deep in to the glacier, so when the guide was showing them to us he held on to our life vests to make sure we didn't fall in as we lent forward to get a better look. As you looked down in to the gap you could see how blue the ice looked. Beautiful! I'm chuffed to have found a Pandora charm the same colour to remember it by. There were streams of glacier water flowing down the glacier which created cracks, and then air pockets which are very dangerous, so you need to be careful when you're walking and keep an eye out in case you stood on softer ground above an air pocket, and fell down in to a crevasse. It was all so fascinating and exciting!
I think that's enough journal extract for today...the rest of it is just more helicopter banter, and me having 2 puddings at dinner time. No need to go in to detail about that!
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